Walking Dead Vet Glen Mazzara To Run Dark Tower TV Series

by Erik Amaya

While the future of The Dark Tower film series is in doubt, its TV future looks bright with the appointment of The Shield and The Walking Dead producer Glen Mazzara as showrunner.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mazzara will take point on the proposed 10-13 episode first season. While everyone involved is avoiding the world “prequel,” the series will depicted events from Stephen King’s Wizard & Glass, The Gunslinger and The Wind Through The Key Hole relating to Roland Deschain’s early days and his first run-ins with Walter O’Dim (or whichever name he feels like going by at that moment). “[These] tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland’s coming of age — how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved,” Mazzara told THR. “I could not be more excited to tell this story. It feels like being given the key to a treasure chest. And oh yeah, we’ll have billy-bumblers!”

Though the film and TV projects are meant to be separate entities, Idris Elba, Tom Taylor and Dennis Haysbert will reprise their roles from the film in some capacity.

Mazzara, for his part, is a great choice. While he never quite for his Omen sequel series Damien where he wanted it, it meshed the real and the fantastic in an intriguing way. Also, it ended on a fairly good cliffhanger.

Meanwhile, the film is opening to mixed reviews. Nonetheless, I will be seeing it tonight and offering my thoughts in the morning. I’m a recent King convert with The Dead Zone and my interest in his world has never been higher. Will it be enough to consider The Dark Tower a worthwhile film? We’ll know soon enough.

Erik Amaya

Host of Tread Perilously and a Film/TV Writer at Comicon.com and Rotten Tomatoes. A former staff writer at CBR and Bleeding Cool, and a contributing writer at Fanbase Press and Monkeys Fighting Robots. Voice of Puppet Tommy on The Room Responds. A seeker of the Seastone Chair and the owner of a Legion Flight Ring. Sorted into Gryffindor, which came as some surprise.